MOVIE NIGHT: ANDREI TARKOVSKY'S "NOSTALGHIA"

Cross-posted with LA & OC Weirdo Music & Art Forum

Rotten Tomatoes gives this one an 88% positive rating

Date: Monday April 14, 7:15 pm

Venue: Frida Cinema
305 E 4th St #100, Santa Ana, CA 92701
Phone: (714) 285-9422

Dinner 6:00 @ Taqueria Guadalajara
305 E 4th St, Santa Ana, CA 92701

Tickets: $13.00

Trailer here

Andrei Tarkovsky Wikipedia entry

Date: Tuesday, May 6, 7:30 pm
Venue: Frida Cinema
305 E 4th St #100, Santa Ana, CA 92701
Phone: (714) 285-9422

Dinner 6:00 @ 4th St Market, 201 E 4th St, Santa Ana, CA 92701

Tickets: $16.00

Trailer here

Rotten Tomatoes gives it an 88% positive rating.

Andrei Tarkovsky Wikipedia entry

Director: Andrei Tarkovsky Run Time: 124 min. Release Year: 1983 Language: Russian & Italian
Starring: Domiziana Giordano, Erland Josephson, Laura De Marchi, Oleg Yankovskiy, Patrizia Terreno

The penultimate film in our Andrei Tarkovsky Retrospective is his rarely-screen film from 1983: Nostalgia.

Set in Italy, Nostalgia follows Andrei Gorchakov, a Russian poet who is researching the life of an Italian composer while grappling with deep homesickness and a sense of alienation in a foreign land. As Gorchakov reflects on his past and the world he left behind in Russia, the film explores the themes of memory, longing, and the difficulty of reconciling one’s personal history with the present.

The film’s intimate, reflective tone, combined with its stark, beautiful cinematography, earned Nostalgia widespread acclaim. It was awarded the Best Director prize at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival, a recognition of Tarkovsky’s extraordinary ability to capture the emotional and spiritual depth of his characters. As a work of exile and reflection, Nostalgia serves as both a personal meditation for Tarkovsky and a universal exploration of the human condition, making it an essential part of his cinematic legacy.

Several scenes of the film were set in the countryside of Tuscany and northern Lazio; as the Abbey of San Galgano, the spas of Bagno Vignoni, the Orcia Valley, in the Province of Siena, the mysterious crypt of the Chiesa di San Pietro (Tuscania) and the flooded Church of Santa Maria in San Vittorino of Cittaducale, in the Province of Rieti.

Similarly to Tarkovsky's previous films, Nostalghia utilizes long takes, dream sequences, and minimal story. Of his use of dream sequences, to the question asked by Gian Luigi Rondi: “A realism of dream, like that of Mirror?” Tarkovsky answered: “There isn’t 'realism' on the one hand, and on the other hand (in contrast, in contradiction) 'dreams.' We spend a third of our life asleep (and thus dreaming): what is there that is more real than dreams?”

Tarkovsky spoke of the profound form of nostalgia which he believes is unique to Russians when traveling abroad, comparing it to a disease, "an illness that drains away the strength of the soul, the capacity to work, the pleasure of living", but also, "a profound compassion that binds us not so much with our own privation, our longing, our separation, but rather with the suffering of others, a passionate empathy."

Tarkovsky's goal in Nostalghia, in terms of style, was to portray the soul, the memory, of Italy, of which it felt to him being there. When he visited Italy to begin studying the project of Nostalghia with Tonino Guerra, as they visited cities, Tonino would show him Renaissance architecture, art, monuments, and he admired them, and would take notes, but what struck him the most was the sky, the blue sky, black sky, with clouds, with the sun, at dawn, at noon, in the evening. A sky, he said, is always simply just that, but a change in the hour of the day, the wind, climate, can have it speak to you in a different way, with love, violence, longing, fear, etc. Cinema, he said, can give these "ways" back to you and that it must, with courage, and honest, always starting from the real.

According to Tarkovsky, while shooting the film he realized that he would be able to express "something distinctive", which he believed he couldn't in his previous films – for only then he had become aware that "a film can make the inner life of its author visible", and, thereby, he "expanded into [himself]."

Soviet authorities prevented the film from winning the Palme d'Or, a fact that hardened Tarkovsky's resolve to never work in the Soviet Union again.